Optical waveguides guide optical signals to propagate along a preferred path or paths. Accordingly, they can be used to carry optical signal information between different locations and thus they form the basis of optical telecommunication networks. The most prevalent type of optical waveguide is an optical fiber based on index guiding. Such fibers include a core region extending along a waveguide axis and a cladding region surrounding the core about the waveguide axis and having a refractive index less than that of the core region. Because of the index-contrast, optical rays propagating substantially along the waveguide axis in the higher-index core can undergo total internal reflection (TIR) from the core-cladding interface. As a result, the optical fiber guides one or more modes of electromagnetic (EM) radiation to propagate in the core along the waveguide axis. The number of such guided modes increases with core diameter. Notably, the index-guiding mechanism precludes the presence of any cladding modes lying below the lowest-frequency guided mode. Almost all index-guided optical fibers in use commercially are silica-based in which one or both of the core and cladding are doped with impurities to produce the index contrast and generate the core-cladding interface. For example, commonly used silica optical fibers have indices of about 1.45 and index contrasts of up to about 2-3% for wavelengths in the range of 1.5 microns.
Another type of waveguide fiber, one that is not based on TIR index-guiding, is a Bragg fiber, which includes multiple dielectric layers surrounding a core about a waveguide axis. The multiple layers form a cylindrical mirror that confines light to the core over a range of frequencies. The multiple layers form what is known as a photonic crystal, and the Bragg fiber is an example of a photonic crystal fiber.
An important characteristic of an optical waveguide is the transmission loss, or attenuation, of the waveguide. Transmission loss can be described as a logarithmic relationship between the optical output power and the optical input power in a waveguide system. It is a measure of the decay of signal strength, or loss of light power, that occurs as light pulses propagate through the length of a waveguide. Transmission loss can be caused by several intrinsic and extrinsic factors. In optical fibers, for example, intrinsic factors include scattering and absorption. Extrinsic causes of attenuation include cable-manufacturing stresses, environmental effects, and physical bends in the fiber.
Much effort has been devoted to minimizing fiber transmission losses and a number of techniques have been developed to measure and monitor waveguide losses during waveguide manufacturing and cabling processes. In one such method for optical fibers, light is launched into one end of the fiber as it is being drawn and a detector, attached to the other end of the fiber, monitors the amount of light transmitted through the fiber as a function of the length of the fiber.